Yvonne Janette Gilan was a Scottish actress who is best known for her portrayal of Mme. Peignoir in Fawlty Towers and minor roles in both EastEnders and French Fields. She was married to the television director Michael Gill, and was the mother of the late journalist, Adrian, known as A. A. Gill.
Early work
In 1964 she wrote a short fantasy film, The Peaches, starring Juliet Harmer, with a small cameo role for her son Adrian as a bespectacled chess player. The film became the British choice for the Cannes Film Festival, and won several international awards. Her comic skills were displayed earlier in Alan Bennett's comedy series On the Margin. Gilan's acting career has also included roles in Z-Cars as Vera Cowley, Dixon of Dock Green, Crossroads as Eileen Blythe, a few episodes of Dr. Finlay's Casebook in several roles and The House of Elliot as Ruth Bannister. Her film credits include Agatha as Mrs Braithwaite, Chariots of Fire as Mrs Liddell, and Empire of the Sun as Mrs Lockwood.
''Fawlty Towers'' (1975)
Gilan's Fawlty Towers appearance in "The Wedding Party", first transmitted on BBC television on 3 October 1975, was as a French antiques dealer who seemed to have a soft spot for hotel owner Basil Fawlty. He, in turn, indulged her a little, while fending off her hints at a nocturnal encounter while she was under the influence of alcohol. Her character had an unusual take on his character: "Are you a romantic, Mr. Fawlty..? Well, I think you are. I think beneath that English exterior throbs a passion that would make Lord Byron look like a tobacconist." After announcing that, due to the summer heat, she would sleep "au naturel tonight", subsequently she teased Fawlty that he had left his cassette player in her room as an excuse to gain entry during the night. In May 2009 G.O.L.D. screened , a show that brought the original Fawlty Towers cast back together for the first time since Torquay's most notorious hotel closed. In the show, Gilan was interviewed and suggested that her French accent sounded more like a Hungarian accent to her now.
At the University of Edinburgh Gilan met Michael Gill, later to have a career as a television director and producer; they married in 1951 and had two sons, Adrian and Nicholas. Their marriage was dissolved in 1978. Gilan's younger son Nicholas, a talented chef, unaccountably disappeared in 1998 and has not been heard from since. "He was an incredibly successful Michelin-starred chef, but he had reached rock bottom". Her older son, Adrian, a newspaper columnist and writer, was known professionally as A. A. Gill. In his autobiography, Adrian described his mother's appearance and characteristics as he recalled them from childhood:
Physical, gamine, a thick shock of short black hair with a heavy fringe. Freckles, dark complexion. A witty, interested, boyish face, but provocative, mocking, with an exhibitionist smile that is not altogether humorous... Her smile can wither or zap like Dan Dare's ray gun.
Gilan kept the letters that Adrian wrote to her from his boarding school, St. Christopher School, Letchworth, in Hertfordshire, and returned them to him half a century later. Adrian died 10 December 2016 aged 62. Gilian died on 14 June 2018 of breast and lung cancer and is survived by her grandchildren, Louis, Hannah, Flora, Alasdair, Edith and Isaac.
